


Fulgurite

by CoffeeCats



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: takes place post-Forsaken campaign
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 04:54:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17155691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoffeeCats/pseuds/CoffeeCats
Summary: A brief exploration of Ikora & Cayde's friendship from Ikora's comment that Cayde was one of her closest friends.Secret Santa gift for Lumi! <3





	Fulgurite

**Author's Note:**

  * For [illumynare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/illumynare/gifts).



Somewhere outside the walls of her room the revelry of the Dawning was in full swing. Guardians and civilians alike were celebrating – exchanging gifts, throwing snowballs across the Tower, and stringing lights and ribbons on every conceivable surface. It was a celebration of joy and hope in the face of darkness and chaos. In years past it was a time that Ikora looked forward to, if only to see Guardians truly relax and enjoy themselves for a few weeks. This year, though…

The couch creaked as she dropped onto it, propping her elbows on her knees. Something on the end table reflected the low light of her room and she glanced over. Her jaw tightened as a string of half formed thoughts and emotions ran through her mind, leaving her with stinging eyes and a tightness in her throat. 

Carefully, as though it might crumble to dust at the slightest touch, she picked it up.

Fulgurite. _Her_ fulgurite. A delicate, spidery mess of frozen sand gifted to her by Cayde the Dawning after she’d atomized him. A sad smile tugged at one corner of her mouth as she remembered how delighted he’d been with the gift. How insufferable he’d been before he gave it to her, trying to bait her into guessing what it was for weeks.

 

_“C’mon, Korrie! Aren’t even gonna give me a little guess? Here, here, I’ll give ya a hint – it’s a souvenir!”_

 

She sighed, leaning back into the couch and closing her eyes as the echo of Cayde's teasing sing-song faded from her mind.

“You bastard,” she mumbled.

Theirs had been an odd friendship, she would be the first to admit. Someone as stoic as Ikora being friends with someone as loud as Cayde? _Impossible_ , Guardians would say when they thought they weren't being heard. _Ikora’s too stern to have fun like Cayde_ , they would say, heedless of the echoes of the halls.  If she was being honest, she never would have expected to become friends with him. Cayde had always been a Hunter through and through – restless, slippery, and plagued by that same deep-rooted yearning for the wilderness they all hid beneath their cloaks and hoods. The few times she'd met him prior to his Vanguard days, she'd thought him insufferable. 

After he became Vanguard, she still did. 

To be Vanguard, though, was to be alone. She knew it, Zavala knew it, and they'd watched Cayde as the realization had dawned on him – you could want nothing more than to take your Light to the heart of the Darkness and tear it out with blade and gun and fist, but as Vanguard... you couldn't. 

Understanding that, and knowing that the only other people who understood were your fellow Vanguards, formed the first tentative bonds of friendship between the three of them. 

She'd come to realize that Cayde's pacing and constant chatting were his way of trying to deflect those feelings of isolation. It was no different from the walls Zavala packed his emotions behind or the training dummies she routinely trashed. Noisier, perhaps. More distracting, to be sure, but in the end, it was still a coping method. Cayde wanted to pretend he was still just a Hunter and was new enough he thought it would work.

She'd never extended an offer to him for a one on one match, but he'd sussed out her training spots on his own and invited himself.

 

_“Do you reimburse Shaxx for those, or is he just shit outta luck?”_

_“It’s in our yearly budget.”_

_The heavy thud of an exo dropping to the ground carried across the empty arena and she turned her attention to him, wiping sweat from her brow. Cayde had stopped a few paces away, standing with his weight shifted to one foot and his hands on his hips._

_“So, this is where you go when you make that growling sound, huh?”_

_She shrugged. “We’ve all got our outlets.”_

_“You need a partner?”_

_She blinked at him. “Excuse me?”_

_He shrugged, mimicking her movement from a moment before. “Seems like it’d be more effective if the dummies shot back.”_

_Tension lanced through the air between them as the standoff game made itself known. A fraction of a second later and the arena exploded in a shower of Light and a clap of thunder, leaving the faint smell of burnt ozone and two Ghosts with jobs to do._

 

They’d never been able to agree on who won that first fight, but there was no denying Ikora’s subsequent wins. Cayde never seemed to mind losing, instead seeming to get a kick out of each new way he was beaten. He certainly had an arsenal of dirty tricks he could have used, but he insisted it was more fun trying to win "the ol' Crucible way."

The fights became their habit. They were never scheduled, never happened in the same place, but on occasions when they could tell someone was about to snap, they would take a break from their duties and proceed to beat each other into the dirt. Usually it was wrapped up with a trip to some City café or another, filled with distracting food and tearing apart the other person's combat strategies. 

She turned the fulgurite over in her hands, letting her fingers tracing over the delicate threads. The action bringing forth memories of lightning and blades of fire.

It had been during one of their sparring sessions – Cayde had decided he was going to "gun without a gun" just to see if he could and she'd decided to tinker with arc Light once again. His supply of knives seemed to be endless and Ikora had been forced to do little other than teleport about the field to avoid being impaled and set aflame. Through some clever strategies and a fair amount of luck she'd finally managed to get the quite literal drop on him and hit him with a landfall powerful enough to reduce him to nothing but a blast mark on the sandy ground.

 

_Sundance materialized and twirled about, bringing Cayde back with more flair than was strictly necessary. Ikora made a show of dusting off her robes as he regained his footing and pointed an accusatory finger at her._

_"You Warlocks and your dirty tricks."_

_"No more trickery than you and your thousands of knives."_

_He flapped a hand dismissively and then stretched before he shook the last bit of post-resurrection tingling from his fingers. She tilted her head as she watched, trying to figure him out. He noticed the look._

_"What?"_

_She shrugged. "Just trying to figure out what you get out of all this."_

_He laughed. "Oh, now you start wondering?"_

_"Everyone else has graciously bowed out after being beaten a few times. You're the first to make it well into the double digits."_

_"Ah, well, it's a good excuse to not be Vanguard for a minute." He paused for a moment, seeming unsure if he should keep talking, and then shrugged. "Getting my ass kicked keeps me grounded. Kinders keep puttin' me up on a pedestal like I'm some sort of god and I'm afraid if it goes to my head, I'll get cocky and get my Hunters killed and... yadda yadda, you know..."_

_That had surprised her. She'd always assumed if it was anything, it was just an opportunity for him to get out of the Tower, not a reminder of his own fallibility._

_"Will you quit starin' at me? I feel like I'm bein' interrogated."_

_"I'm just... surprised."_

_"Good surprised or bad surprised?" A beat passed, and he waved both his hands in front of his face. "Never mind, I don't wanna know. What I_ do _want is some ramen."_

 

Little changed from then on, though they did occasionally invite Zavala to the game (usually met with a polite refusal) or use it as a chance to test out ideas they'd had for Hunters and Warlocks working together. After Oryx and the Taken had arrived they'd all had less and less free time available to take a break from their duties. The stress of constant new threats to the City and system at large had been straining their friendships and slowly driving their team apart for years.

Cayde had started talking about contingencies and the Dare and she'd snapped at him that it wasn't necessary. They'd beaten Oryx, they would beat anything else that followed. He'd sulked and refused to speak to her unless absolutely necessary for three days. Zavala had refused to take a side, but she could tell from his clouded expressions that he'd thought Cayde was right and that had irritated her. Their lack of confidence had felt like a jab at her own skills and she took it personally.

The Red Legion's attack had pulled their team back together again for a time, but after the war was won the air between them was awkward. No one seemed to know how to open a conversation with anyone else, so they quietly stationed themselves far apart in the Tower and waited for someone else to do something.

Ikora set the fulgurite back down on the table and pressed her palms into her eyes.

Did Cayde die thinking she hated him? Would things have been different if she could have swallowed her pride and admitted there was a chance they could fail? Would he have left the Tower alone if she'd tried to talk to them after the war? What if, what if, _what if?_

Static arced between her fingers at the internal dilemma. Give her an enemy to fight any day. Something physical she could attack and outwit and defeat, but she couldn't outwit grief. Couldn’t outwit regret.

She felt Ophiuchus stir somewhere in the back of her mind and she huffed angrily. "Not now."

As if just to test her patience, a light knock came from her door.

_"Not now!"_

Seconds ticked by but no follow-up knock came and she sighed as she dropped her hands. Ophiuchus had told her once long ago that her pride would be her downfall and as much as she refused to admit it, she thought he might be right.

"What am I supposed to do?"

Ophiuchus stirred again, hesitating before he spoke. "Move forward."

She scowled, the argument on her lips cut off as Ophiuchus continued. "You regret not talking to Cayde, so talk to Zavala. Grieve together and move forward. There will be no happily ever after, but do not let Uldren take two friends from you."

Her scowl stayed, but she hauled herself up from the couch and moved to the door, hesitating with a hand on the frame. She had no idea how to even start a conversation with Zavala. It was guaranteed to be awkward and she wasn't looking forward to any of it.

Before she could change her mind, she punched the control to open the door and stopped short of stepping out into the hall. Just across the threshold sat a small box, rather plain and giving no hint as to its contents. She picked it up – it was nearly weightless – and pulled the lid off. Folded up inside was a delicately crafted blanket of soft silver yarn. No tag was attached, but she didn't need one.

Maybe this conversation wouldn't be as painful as she expected.

 


End file.
